


The Ending is the Same Every Damn Time

by Snow



Category: Bel Dame Apocrypha - Kameron Hurley
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Character of Color, Jealousy, Male Character of Color, UST - resolved, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:36:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She could read in his eyes that he wanted to tell her that that wasn't what he wanted. But for all that he was a liar — every one of them was — he also wasn't a complete idiot. Instead he didn't say anything, and she left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ending is the Same Every Damn Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree/gifts).



> Thanks to Cedara for the beta.

Rhys' hand wrapped around Nyx's wrist, firmer than she would have expected. It would have been easy to break her hand free, would have been easy to break his fingers, if she decided to. Instead she turned her eyes on him.

"What the fuck are you doing, Rhys?" she asked him, and if he flinched at her words he also let go.

Nyx refused to feel guilty about that. It was the way things should be, after all, and it was him touching her that was unnatural.

"Stay and talk to me," he said.

Her eyes were still on him, and her lips twisted up into a grim smile. "That's not what I do, and you know it. Now if you wanted me to stay and fuck you, that would be a subject I might entertain."

"Nyx, do you have to be so crude?"

She tilted her head while she studied him, watching the lines of his face and imagined him naked and under her. "Stay and make love to me."

"What?" His eyes went almost comically wide and Nyx wanted to laugh. It might be kinder than the rest of what she was doing.

"Say it and maybe I'll do it. Otherwise I'm gone."

She could read in his eyes that he wanted to tell her that that wasn't what he wanted. But for all that he was a liar — every one of them was — he also wasn't a complete idiot. Instead he didn't say anything, and she left. She could find someone else to warm her bed, or more accurately to spend a few hours wrapped in the body of them, and she did.

* * *

She didn't smell particularly like sex in the morning, but she was pretty sure that he could still tell. It didn't matter to her, a good fuck was what she'd needed to feel a little more relaxed and if Rhys wanted to act self-righteous about it, the only person he was hindering was himself.

Part of her wanted to push it more, to see if he would ever crack under the pressure, and as it always was with these sorts of things, she only had to look in order to find the opportunity.

"What are you doing?" he asked when she stood. He was finishing his meal -- their last job hadn't paid as badly as they usually did -- and her whiskey hadn't taken long to drink. She could see the nervous dart of his eyes around the place, the fear that she was going to make him choose between safety at her side and having the chance to finish his meal. She'd done it before, sure, but it still pissed her off that he couldn't tell that this time wasn't about that. 

"I'll walk you home if you don't wander off before then," she said, and if her voice was harsh she still made sure to pin a couple people who looked like trouble with her gaze as she walked away, to make sure they wouldn't bother Rhys while he was eating. But then, her goal also wasn’t to go out of sight.

It didn't take long to find someone that she found half-way attractive and who seemed to think the same of her, but it did end up taking a little longer because she was looking specifically for a guy. She sat down at his table and leaned in over it. She let her attention stay entirely centered on this new man, let herself think about how it wouldn't really be that bad to start the night with him. He was Ras Tiegan, and a little too skinny, but he didn't look like he'd break too easily, and he was drinking something strong.

He called for another glass of whiskey for her when she asked, and his hand came down over hers. Nyx still hadn't looked at Rhys when the man moved his chair closer, when her arm settled over his shoulders and he turned his face in for a kiss, and she thought it might have been the longest she'd ever been in the same room as Rhys where that was true. 

She refused to let herself be disappointed when the first kiss ended because her partner — whatever his name was, he'd offered but it didn't seem to matter — pulled back for a breath of air, and not because of anything else. She'd always known how this would end, up against the wall with this man, Rhys having either given up on her or waiting around, pretending he didn't have the slightest clue what she was doing. Usually she gave a little more credence to that possibility.

The hand that settled on her shoulder actually startled her, and Nyx drew herself away.

"Don't you Nasheenians have any sense of decency at all?" Rhys asked, and his hand was gone as soon as it could be.

She should have figured that he'd come over just to moralize. "No," she said. "And if you had any sense, you wouldn't either. Now, are you going to leave us alone or did you want to be invited along with?"

Rhy's eyebrows froze where they were, and she could tell that she'd actually managed to shock him. That shouldn't matter, shouldn't change anything at all about her plans for tonight, but with a sigh she spilled out some coins for her drink, finished it, and then rose. She didn't offer the man she was leaving behind an apology because there wasn't anything to apologize for. It had been a pretty good kiss, and there hadn't been the promise of anything more.

"Nyx," Rhys said, as he followed her.

She wanted to snap at him that he didn't have to, but he did, and it wasn't for her sake but for his. She knew that, and he probably didn't want to be reminded. 

"What was that?" he asked.

"What the fuck did it look like?" She stopped walking, forcing him to stop as well. "You want to tell me what you're doing right now?"

"You shouldn't throw yourself at men like that," he said, and she wanted to strangle him.

"It's not like I'm expecting them to catch me."

"I would," Rhys said, and it was so quiet that she almost missed it. She would have missed it if they'd still been walking.

She felt suddenly exhausted. "No Rhys, you wouldn't."

It was such a surprise to find his hands on her shoulder, pressing her towards the wall, that she let it happen. His mouth covering her could have been expected by the point it happened, except for the fact that it was Rhys and Nyx was starting to be sure that he'd never kissed anyone in his life.

His lips on hers didn't provide her with a new idea of that, but if they were clumsy and awkward they were also his, different in a way that should never have been possible. Nyx didn't do people, she did bodies.

He stepped in closer to her and she took the opportunity to slide a leg through his ankles, to lift her own hands and shift them, pressing his back against the wall. He'd be second-guessing himself by now, thinking about the fact that his God wouldn't care for this, thinking about the fact that anyone walking by could see them, and she didn't want to give him the chance to think. She wanted him to be too far gone by lust by the time she suggested that they go home, so that he would accept it as an inevitability that they would go home to finish this, rather than taking the opportunity to change his mind.

He drew back, and she thought it was for breath so she let him go. His kisses were still obnoxiously closed-mouthed, but she'd licked at his lips and he'd almost parted them.

"Nyx," he said, and when he said it like that, with his breath caught and his body underneath her, she found that she didn't mind it so much. "You taste—"

"Like whiskey," she said, and then she pressed in again, letting him really taste her. His tongue curled around hers in his mouth, and when she ran her palm between them she found him hard.

"Let's go," she said, and he agreed to it.

* * *

When she had him in a bed without his clothes on, she thought he might stop her. She paused, as much as she didn't want to, as much as she wanted to just keep going and let him catch up. With anyone else, she would have.

His eyes raked over her, and whatever he had been going to say never came out. "Come here," he said, and his hands were too gentle as they cupped her breasts, but she made up for it with the scratch of her nails against his back.

He shivered against her touch, but Nyx refused to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, not now of all moments. "Look at me," she told him, and he did, while she brought her hand lower. "I’m not going to break," she told him.

Rhys opened his mouth, closed it again, and then he laughed.

That was too much for her, and Nyx rolled them so that she was on top of him, so that her thighs were on either side of his legs. Her mouth closed over his while her hand closed over his cock, bringing him from half-hard to fully erect. His hands were still clumsy on her body, but he was trying, and they looked so beautiful whenever she watched the path of them. She used her free hand to move one of those hands to her mouth, and he drew back to watch her take his index finger into her mouth, to swirl her tongue around it. He seemed to respond as much to that as to the stimulation to his cock, so Nyx lined him up with her while she scraped her teeth against his finger.

"Nyx," he said, and she can’t tell if he’s asking her to stop or to continue so she pauses, flips her tongue to press his finger toward the roof of her mouth.

"Nyx," he said again, and this time she lowered her hips against his. She did it slowly, mostly to prove herself that she could, and she let go of his finger so that she could watch Rhys’ face. He’d let his eyes fall shut and his face showed every passing reaction. She felt gratified to realize that most of them were expressions of pleasure.

Once she had him fully inside of her, she shifted her hips, changing the angle and letting the pleasure of that take over her thoughts for a moment. She figured that Rhys likely wouldn't last that long, but there were ways to go slowly that didn't mean completely sacrificing her own wants. 

"Nyx," he said.

She flicked her eyes up to his just to see that he still hadn't opened them. She wondered what he gained by that, and then she was moving her hands to his hips, lifting herself off of him again. "My name's not the only thing you know how to say," she responded, sinking down, slowly, letting gravity do most of the work.

"I don't think you'd like poetry," he said, and if he was coherent enough to form that sort of sentence, to _think_ about poetry, then maybe Nyx didn't have to go quite so slowly. She started to rock herself against him, settling into a rhythm as she grabbed his wrist, relocated his hand so it was slightly between them when he was all the way inside of her. She itched to touch him, to show him all the other parts of his body that could cause him pleasure, but she really didn't want him to be done too quickly. And she figured he'd probably panic if she went for his ass.

"Depends on if it was in tribute to my breasts or not."

Contrary to her expectations, he didn't abuse her name again, instead he finally let his eyes open. "They are very nice." His voice sounded soft, almost dreamy.

"Rhys," she said, and her voice was everything that she didn't want it to be, full of longing and desire and way too much interest in that simple compliment. That Rhys was a sexual creature she had never doubted, even if he had, because he was human, and that was what humans did. His face settled into something more grim, and she watched it happen for a moment, not changing anything other than to shove his hand aside and replace it with her own so she could get the contact to her clit that she really needed. "Are you holding back?" she asked.

His lips parted, but then he just nodded.

She laughed, and she could see him trying to get mad at her. Here, now, _finally_ it was impossible. "Don't," she told him.

So he stopped doing so, and she could see it on his face, and then she could see the orgasm there, as well as feeling it inside of her.

Her hand and his slowly softening cock inside of her were enough to finish her off, and in the aftermath of the rush of pleasure and even after pulling off of him, Nyx wanted more, not less. She had always been a fool. 

She rolled off the bed.

"Wait," he said, and his hand lifted to her, tried to grab at her wrist.

She left. He'd only want to wallow in his feelings of guilt anyway. The sooner he realized that, the sooner he could get to moving on past them.


End file.
